The UK's peat bogs are continually capturing carbon. They contain and permanently lock up more carbon that the whole of Europe's woodland coverage. Picture the thousands of acres of Scottish blanket bog 6 foot deep of peat and tell me where you are going to dig a hole that big to bury your trees.

Maybe they could use "left over holes", such as old quarries*, old salt mines, old coal mines, etc. You'd likely want them to be close to the woods, to minimize transport costs. It's a Worldwide issue, perhaps other countries might be able to contribute suitable holes.

ToneWood wrote: A local farm has recently built a large new facility specifically to generate methane - using a mixture of cow poo and crop waste. So it could be a v. profitable and worthwhile byproduct. You can use methane for heating, cooking, generating electricity and even powering vehicles. ......There are too many people.

Would that be the Malaby Biogas plant at Bore Hill, Warminster??? (http://www.malabybiogas.com/anaerobic-d ... -hill-farm) Curious, as yet I have never seen any vehicles entering or leaving the site, and I pass by it most days.... It will be a good idea if it does succeed in doing what it is supposed to, but Phase 2 does not appear to have started yet....

Ref growing trees to lock up the carbon a) worldwide are we not cutting down too many at the moment? b) do we have the land to spare with a rising world population and a need to feed it??? c) where would we store the converted carbon?? d) if allowed to rot then will give off greenhouse gases.... Better that we stop wasting the biomass we create at the moment, and use it where we are currently burning fossil fuels/gases.....

Collector and restorer of old agricultural edge tools, especially billhooks

Billman wrote:Would that be the Malaby Biogas plant at Bore Hill, Warminster??? (http://www.malabybiogas.com/anaerobic-d ... -hill-farm) Curious, as yet I have never seen any vehicles entering or leaving the site, and I pass by it most days.... It will be a good idea if it does succeed in doing what it is supposed to, but Phase 2 does not appear to have started yet....

Ref growing trees to lock up the carbon a) worldwide are we not cutting down too many at the moment? b) do we have the land to spare with a rising world population and a need to feed it??? c) where would we store the converted carbon?? d) if allowed to rot then will give off greenhouse gases.... Better that we stop wasting the biomass we create at the moment, and use it where we are currently burning fossil fuels/gases.....

No, not Bore Hill but that looks similar. Are they are planning to sell the gas, generate electricity or just use it on and/or near the farm?

Re. your other points (just my 2 cents worth):

(a) I don't know the statistics but, yes, I would think that Worldwide humans are cutting down too many trees. I expect somebody will tell us that Britain has more trees now than since...whatever. I think the real concern is the Amazon rainforest ("the lungs of the World") and Indonesia, probably other places too (Malaya/Burma/Thailand/Africa/India/...) I guess it also depends if you replant or not, and how you cut them down & replant. I have noticed that a lot of countryside - not just woodland - has disappeared in the UK during my lifetime; I love the British countryside so I find that disturbing.

(b) You'd think not but if you fly over, say, America (& probably China) you'd probably say yes. But I think (just my 2 cents worth) that we'd still need to drastically reduce/eliminate the growth of the human population worldwide - as it is the root cause of this and many other serious, growing problems. With modern machines & technology, we have never needed large numbers of people less.

(c) & (d) See previous post: big holes in the ground. Preferably big, existing ones, near the wood that is grown. Probably covered over (either in layers or when full) to reduce/control decomposition and/or emission of greenhouse gases - possibly soaked in (acidic?) water (like peat). [I'm making this up as we go along - so please excuse my vagueness .]

Re. using biomass, sounds good to me.

BTW It occurs to me that being green and saving energy should cost us less money not more - but our governments always seem to make it cost more. At some level, money and energy are interchangeable -- if you are spending a lot of money, that is costing/using energy. Waging war (e.g. Iraq) isn't very green, nor is building diesel/oil fueled aircraft carrier, yet our governments did this while raising taxes on fuel and telling us to cut back.

Not criticising and I believe ideas are the mother of innovation etc. Just my thoughts on the peat bog idea - since I'm no expert and therefore won't claim fact on the matter but did a bit of reading during my degree - but my understanding is that they result from millions of years of deposition, in ideal conditions, of lots and lots of suitable matter dying (sphagnum moss which is not exactly a fast or massive plant), breaking down, and forming peat in layers - and presumably the catalyst initially was the rock plus the specific specie of flora - they tend to be (and again forgive me if this wrong but in my experience) in pretty high, cold, windy and wet places - heather for example is a xerophyte, and survives due to small leaves and low transpiration, and has presumably evolved to conserve moisture by lowering transpiration, low nutrients, and hence, has a biochemical acidic makeup to assist this, and that combination precluded rotting and created the peat.

Not sure the same would work in gravel pits in Bedfordshire - and presumably to acidify water you have to treat it, and keep it acidified - not sure how you'd do that but I suspect it'd involve some quarrying or huge scale heating of mined products at some point, which with the lack of space / NIMBY factor, would probably mean importation from a less developed country, hence carbon from those processes, likely human suffering to the poor buggers forced to work in the process, etc.

Plus, are very old trees not extracted from bogs very well preserved due to the very conditions within? Complex subject but I fear the only answer now is the earth 'solving' the problem by becoming uninhabitable to a lesser or greater degree for Homo sapiens